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Peace Operations

After a more than a decade of continuous expansion, historic levels of demand and increasing operational complexity pose risks to the viability of peace operations. Setbacks in high-profile missions have coincided with military overstretch and growing fiscal austerity, while missions that have achieved interim stability lack a clear transition strategy towards sustainable peacebuilding and development. At the same time, the evolving use of a range of alternative models of peace operations, including the hugely expanded use of special political missions, is both creating new options and adding complexity to policy debates. At the UN and elsewhere, new questions about the relative merits of traditional peacekeeping versus lighter options create an ongoing demand for policy-relevant research. CIC aims to provide analysis on these issues and to improve conceptual and operational linkages across political missions, peacekeeping operations, and peacebuilding.

Related Publications

In the sixth briefing in CIC's series on prevention, we take stock after the July 2019 High-level Political Forum on the instrumental role that development initiatives can play in conflict prevention. As highlighted in the 2011 World Development Report and the 2018 UN–World Bank Pathways for Peace report, often root causes are related to lack of equitable access to economic opportunities, or a combination of political and economic inequalities that fuel grievances. Some risk factors may therefore need to be addressed with development tools. Drawing on field research and on member state reporting at the recent High-level Political Forum, this briefing highlights development measures countries have taken to support prevention, and highlights ways the UN system can better assist these efforts.

On the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are pleased to share some of the work we are most proud of from July 2017-June 2018 — work that we believe has contributed to advancing effective multilateral action to prevent crises and build peace, justice, and inclusion.

Financing the sustaining peace agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the prevention of conflict requires innovative thinking about new methods of generating resources. There is an emerging conversation in the peacebuilding field—drawing on work already being done in the development sector, as well as ideas in the humanitarian sector—about innovative ways to increase resources and foster collaboration with new partners. This publication provides a comprehensive resource on these emerging ideas and practices.

Past Events

Paige Arthur, CIC Deputy Director, was a member of a distinguished panel of peacebuilding practitioners for the Initiative for Peacebuilding through Education’s 2017-18 academic year kickoff event, “Has Peacebuilding Failed? The Shift to Sustaining Peace”. The event was held at the NYU SPS Center for Global Affairs on September 15, 2017.

The people of South Sudan is suffering under a terrible man-made catastrophe where millions have fled from their homes and many face starvation. Ending the three-year-old civil war is the first step to solve the crisis, but negotiations, led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), have faltered.